Implement the recommendations of the HASC drugs inquiry

To:
The Prime Minister, presently David Cameron

1. Set up a Royal Commission on drugs policy to report in 2015.
2. Return cannabis to class C in accordance with expert advice.
3. Make drugs policy a joint responsibility between the Home Office and the Department of Health.
4. Fund a project to research the effects of cannabis legalisation in Colorado and Washington state

Why is this important?

The recommendations of the inquiry are very modest and the absolute minimum that should be implemented, particularly as the evidence heard by the committee was highly selective and heavily biased in favour of the existing policy of prohibition.

The inquiry failed to examine the vital issue of medicinal cannabis at all and ignored the interests of the 95% of drug users who cause no harm to themselves or society. Had it done so its recommendations would have been far more radical.

It is a disgrace, a waste of public money and an insult to every voter that David Cameron rejected the report immediately and then confessed the following day that he had not even read it.

Despite what it claims, British government drugs policy is not evidence based. As both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts committee have declared, it is based on ministers' opinions - expert advice and evidence is rejected out of hand.

Approaching £20 billion is the annual cost of present drugs policy and millions of lives are blighted by unscientific, cruel, irrational and prejudiced government action. Full implementation of the inquiry's report is the very minimum we must accept.

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